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A federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump to use a 227 -year law aimed at protecting the United States during the war to carry out mass deportations from Venezuelans.
On Saturday, Trump proclaimed that immigrants belonging to the gang of the Venezuelan crime of Aragua were “carrying out an irregular war” against the United States and that he would deport them under the law of alien enemies of 1798.
But American district judge James Boasberg on Saturday night ordered a detention for deportations covered by the proclamation that will last 14 days, according to media reports.
Judge Boasberg told an hearing that he had heard the aircraft with deportees who were taking off and ordered them to become, the Washington Post reported.
The law allows the USA during war time to stop and eliminate people who threaten the security of the country without having to follow the due process. It was last invoked the internal people of Japanese descent during World War II.
There was little surprise for the proclamation on Saturday, where Trump declared that Train de Aragua was “perpetrating, trying and threatening an invasion or predatory raid against the territory of the United States.”
He had promised to use the controversial law for mass deportations during last year’s campaign.
The American Union of Civil Liberties and other rights groups had already demanded to prevent it from using it on Saturday before issuing the proclamation as well.
At a hearing, the judge said that the terms “invasion” and “predatory raid” in the law “really relate to hostile acts perpetrated by enemy nations”, and the law probably did not offer a good basis for Trump’s proclamation, according to the New York Times.
An Aclu lawyer had told the New York Times that he believed that there were two airplanes of Venezuelan immigrants in the air on Sunday. The BBC has not verified that report.
The case will now move through the legal system and could go to the Supreme Court.
The proclamation, and the fight around them, should bring together the supporters of Trump, who returned it largely to the White House in their promises to take energetic measures against illegal immigration and reduce the prices of everyday goods. Since it was inaugurated in January, he has worked quickly to review the United States immigration system.
The rights groups, together with some legal experts, call the unprecedented invocation, noting that the Alien enemies law has been used in the past after the United States officially declared the war against other countries. According to the Constitution, only Congress can declare war.
All Venezuelan citizens in the US who are at least 14 years old, the members of the Aragua Train and “are not actually the permanent naturalized or legal residents” had to be “detained, restricted, insured and eliminated as alien enemies,” under the order of Trump.
Trump did not appear in the proclamation how US officials would determine that a person is a member of the violent and transnational gang.
When using this law, instead of the immigration laws that already give it “broad authority” to deport the gang members, Trump would not have to demonstrate that the detainees are part of the train of Aragua, said Katherine Yon Ebright, lawyer of the Brennan Justice Center in a statement.
“He wants to avoid any need to provide evidence or convince a judge that someone is really a member of a gang before deporting them,” he said.
“The only reason to invoke such power is to try to allow radical arrests and deportations of Venezuelans based on their ancestry, not in any gang activity that can be tested in immigration procedures.”
